Romans for the bettering of their State after the year 449 before
our aera,--which is the date of the composition of the Twelve
Tables,--and look only at those which extended social equality, we
find enactments "aequi juris," such as the Lex Canuleia which
allowed the intermarriage of patricians and plebeians, and the
Leges Liciniae, which put both orders on a par in holding public
offices. It is clear that these laws never came to the knowledge
of the author of the Annals; and it is for the reader to decide
for himself whether he thinks it likely that a lawyer and
statesman of the stamp of Tacitus could have been ignorant of the
removal of these weighty and vexatious class inconveniences.

V. Had Tacitus written the Annals, he would have known more of the
speech which Claudius spake in the Senate (XI. 24), when the
inhabitants of Transalpine Gaul petitioned to be rendered eligible
to the highest offices of the State, than to direct the eloquence
of the Emperor in favour of all the extra-provincial Gauls in
general, and the Aedui in particular. From the way in which he
wrote harangues--that of Galgacus in his Agricola, for instance,
--he would have caught in his alembic the essence of the original,
and sublimated it; but he would not have placed before us an
offspring that does not reflect one feature of its parent. Yet
that is what the author of the Annals did with the speech of
Claudius: he fabricated that which bears not the faintest
resemblance to the original. If the assumption be considered as
true that he forged the Annals, he could not have done otherwise;
for when he was engaged in the business of forgery, the speech was
not in existence, it not being until 1528, more than a hundred
years after the Eleventh Book of the Annals was written by him,
and considerably over half a century after it was first printed in